Kyong Park
Imagining New Eurasia Chapter 2—
From, To, and In Between: Theatre of Networks
September 1, 2016–June 4, 2017
Opening: September 1, 4–6pm
Asia Culture Center
ACC Creation, Space 3 38, Munhwajeondang-ro
Dong-gu, Gwangju
Republic of Korea
Hours: Tuesday and Thursday–Sunday 10am–6pm,
Wednesday 10am–9pm
www.acc.go.kr
www.imaginingneweurasia.org
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From, To, and In Between: Theatre of Networks is an exhibition about what made people, materials, and knowledge move across Eurasia. It deals with the ways in which the Old Silk Road, New Silk Roads, and other routes have constructed a grand network that shaped and defined the continent since ancient times. Using historical and contemporary materials, this research-based exhibition presents visual narratives on how wars, religions, trade, and other dynamic forces have created paths that forged relations, and often disturbances, between different culture and states.
With allegorical images and fantastical facts from Eurasian history, the exhibition is organized around six fictional characters, each representing merchants, migrants, travelers, explorers, conquerors, and key materials in trade, such as silk and fossil oil. The characters are identified in a series of double-sided billboards, titled “Figures in Motion, Across the Allegorical Landscape.” A collection of historical figures is combined to create the fictional characters, whose remarkable expressions underline and instill a discourse that falls “in-between” the fictional and historical spaces of the Eurasian networks.
Projected inside a 360-degree panoramic pavilion is History Rhymes, while Geography Endures. Beginning with a series of pulsating routes of conquerors, travelers, and oil/gas pipelines, the panoramic video proceeds to an unpredictable mosaic of moving-images that scan across the global nodes of migrants, tourists and refugees in motion. It then moves to the geopolitical atlas of corporate and national networks, and ends with the inseparable dual between the utopia of urban developments and dystopia of its destructions. All of the scenarios are narrated by the Goddess of Networks. She ridicules the unproven separation of Europe and Asia, while extolling her network that would destine the continent to become one culture, under one history. She is a fictional mastermind who commands the six actors in this Theatre of Networks.
The exhibition concludes with Tales of Movement, Inscribed Topographies, six strips of image tables, upon which rest 82 cities, four expeditions by Kyong Park, and ten new and controversial gas/oil pipelines. All geographically positioned, and designed to recall the Old Silk Road, these thousands of historical and contemporary images, maps and text are color-coded in relation to the six fictional characters in the Theatre of Networks. Running along the spine of these image tables are the topographical sections of the land that lie between these cities and routes, writing a visual story about a typology of movements, set against the topography of Eurasia.
As the second chapter of Imagining New Eurasia, From, To, and In Between: Theatre of Networks unveils the ambitions, desires, and fantasies that have played into the making of human networks, and how they are inscribed upon the geography of the continent. The exhibition also contends that these networks are not new, nor only digital, certainly not neutral, and most likely very harmful. Its long history is filled with massacres and pillages, as its paths were prized and contested. The New Eurasia may not be better than the Old Eurasia. Perhaps a fiction could free us from the tyranny of its past, and only then the Imagining New Eurasia could be fully imagined.
Imagining New Eurasia is a multi-year project to research and visualize the historical precedents and contemporary reconstructions of Eurasia as one continent. The project wonders what could be the new relationship between East and West, and what would be the new identity of Eurasia. Through a narrative sequence of three distinct chapters, Imagining New Eurasia highlights the significance of cities, networks and territories within the new urban, regional and continental geopolitics. The project questions if a belief in the movements of commerce, migrations and cultural exchanges will bring about greater understanding between different societies, or if we we are headed for only larger clashes of civilizations.
Asia Culture Center (ACC)
A newly established innovative center of cultural prosperity, the Asia Culture Center serves as the foundation where Asian cultural exchange and collaboration takes place. This groundbreaking venue promotes the creation, exhibition, performance, and distribution of cultural production as Asia’s greatest culture complex. Discover and experience the captivating and innovative culture that Asia has to offer at this complex center, where cultural enrichment and diversity is fostered.
Press contact:
Moonjung, Chae, ACC Curatorial Team, moonjung [at] iacd.kr
Jihoi Lee, curator of Imagining New Eurasia, jihoi.inep [at] gmail.com / T +82 10 7194 3589
